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Chris Matthews retiring (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter NorvilleBarnes
- Start date
pantherclub
Footballguy
toshiba
Footballguy
Not sure what the 90s have to do with today? Is it your idea to because slavery was legal at one point it’s no big deal today? Obviously times change and so do our social standards.
Hadn't seen this research, but I could certainly imagine that it's true. Did they specifically measure this in a workplace setting?rockaction said:
Ultimately, though, it's irrelevant to what we're discussing. A woman has the right to react any way she wants based on the man's attractiveness or any other factor, but from the man's perspective none of that has any bearing in a legal (or even ethical) sense.
If Chris Matthews had been old friends with the woman and they had a history of making jokes like that with each other, his comments would have been fine. But in context, they were not welcome. Similarly, if I walk up to my wife and kiss her on the mouth, that's OK. If Brad Pitt does it, particularly in a professional setting, it's not OK, despite the fact that I am (slightly) less attractive than him.
Don't be creepy. Don't be creepy if you're attractive. Don't be creepy if you're ugly. Don't be creepy if you're average looking. If you're not sure whether a remark is creepy, err on the side of not saying it, especially if you're at work.
pantherclub
Footballguy
Dude it was a joke. When I worked in corporate in the 90's everyone was hooking up with each other. It wasnt some taboo thing back then.toshiba said:
Not sure what pantherclub's point was, so I'll let him explain it, but his post made me think back to the time in the Aughts when I worked for a major media company in NYC. Some of the old-timers who had worked there forever used to tell stories of what it was like in the '70s and '80s. Early on Friday afternoons, they would roll the liquor cart through the offices and everyone would get good and sloshed. Then hijinks would ensue, including lots of couples slipping off to conference rooms, storage closets, etc.toshiba said:
They were telling me these stories before the release of "Mad Men", so they didn't use that as a reference point, but basically all the stuff that happened in that show. And I bet there were lots of incidents that did not end well for the women involved.
No grand point, just thought I'd share.
rockaction
Footballguy
The problem is defining what is creepy. Is it in the eye of the speaker or listener? That's important.
Anyway, I never personally have because of manners and decency, but these new rules...are they making things better, really? Or just sterile. Sterility seems to be an ugly thing we've passed down to our youngsters, and that's apropos of nothing.
toshiba
Footballguy
The standard is and has always been in the eye of a reasonable person. Yes, that has changed over time. But it's not some unknowable concept. And if you get it wrong, especially more than once, maybe it's a good idea to reassess whether your idea of "reasonable" is accurate, rather than immediately assuming the other person is being unreasonable (using the "royal you" there, not criticizing you specifically).
This argument has always frustrated me. Have we "lost something" in this era of "sterility"? Maybe. But under the old system, women had to constantly watch what they said and how they reacted, even in situations where men's actions were clearly unreasonable. (And while it's gotten better, don't kid yourself into thinking that type of s##t isn't still going on.) But most of us men never had to deal with it, so we never considered it a problem. It's kind of like if the police suddenly started enforcing traffic regulations, and you complained because it took you an extra few minutes to get anywhere, but meanwhile there were a bunch of people who weren't getting run over as you sped through red lights.
rockaction
Footballguy
Men always had to watch themselves before God died, actually. There were always restraints, it's just that the new order is to be enforced over older, more charitable and decent notions. This seems to have been forgotten at the altar of feminism, something that never holds but leaves men privately seething.
You can be very crafty passing off opinions as facts of the matter. Those are my takes.
pantherclub
Footballguy
It was a joke and I worked in corporate during that time and it seemed like the wild wild west compared to today. It was no big deal to hook up with a co worker.
You can say that the old order was more "charitable and decent", but whatever restraints were in place didn't prevent lots of women from being assaulted, harassed and diminished, nor from having their career prospects limited by blatant sexism.
Yes, that's my opinion, and I never presented it as anything else. But I do feel like I'm on pretty solid ground here.
rockaction
Footballguy
Therefore the new order must be more subjective and punitive, though it once claimed objectivity and lenience. Society has done a wonderful end-around its distillation of millenia of wisdom about women and men contained in codes about general sex roles and behaviors. This, I believe, is a net negative.
wikkidpissah
Footballguy
As SCJustice Potter Stewart once said, "I wouldn't venture to describe creepy, but i know what i like...."
As titillating as it may be to imagine a Supreme Court Justice implying in a legal decision that he's a horndog, the full quote is "I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description [of "hardcore pornography"]; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that."
wikkidpissah
Footballguy
what kinda robes are you wearing?
rockaction
Footballguy
It was Potter Stewart that said that in an obscenity case and wikkid was making a joke in reference to it.
Yes, I got that. And I was in turn making my own (admittedly nitpicky) joke that by getting the quote slightly wrong (“I know what I like” vs “I know it when I see it,”) Wikkid was implying Stewart was a connoisseur of pornography.
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rockaction
Footballguy
rockaction
Footballguy
Suffice it to say I think innocent comments about people looking nice today with no hidden overtones to be a-okay, anywhere, anytime. Anything else is just Puritan #######ry.
If Matthews did just that, he should be nowhere gone. It sounds like he quit because he was in the habit of doing that and someone complained. That he left disgruntled and at the front end of his show tells me something.
It tells me the offending party -- which I've seen run amok first-hand -- needs to get the #### over themselves in general and not just as a female.
If Matthews did just that, he should be nowhere gone. It sounds like he quit because he was in the habit of doing that and someone complained. That he left disgruntled and at the front end of his show tells me something.
It tells me the offending party -- which I've seen run amok first-hand -- needs to get the #### over themselves in general and not just as a female.
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Sheriff Bart
Footballguy
A woman at work filed a sexual harassment suit against a guy whom at the time I considered a friend. He was fairly attractive, I guess, had a hot wife that I found out later he frequently cheated on. The woman however was about 5'4, 240 pounds and ate lunch almost every day at the White Castle down the street. So yeah, gross. She also spoke with a deep baritone and sounded like a stereotypical "dumb football player".rockaction said:
HR, who was a female, just asked him to stay away from her after a hearty laugh. This was probably 30 years ago.
Sheriff Bart
Footballguy
I can confirm and tell you it was glorious. Sometimes drink too much at lunch and just go to sleep in my office the rest of the afternoon, etc.
wikkidpissah
Footballguy
next to "nitpicky", my favorite comic word is "moist"
BigSteelThrill
Footballguy
pantherclub
Footballguy
It sounds like Matthews combined compliments with innuendo and continued until it got uncomfortable.
That was my sense as well. However, we should all keep in mind that we know very little about what happened. We don't know exactly what Matthews said to female employees (and just as important, the tone/context of his remarks). We don't know if it was those comments, his other screwups or a combination. We don't know if he jumped or was pushed.
The topic of sexual harassment/workplace appropriateness is relevant in its own right. But if you're drawing any sort of major conclusions from Matthews' situation, all you're really doing is revealing your own pre-existing biases.
I mean, it's kind of a tautology to say that innocent comments are OK. Everyone's going to agree with that. The question is how you define "innocent". As I said in my previous post, we don't know the exact situation with Matthews and Bassett, nor do we know specifically how much impact it had on his leaving. So I'm not going to draw any conclusions from it.
More generally, what I will say is that if someone tells me they found a comment to be creepy or inappropriate or outright harassment, absent any evidence to the contrary I'm probably going to give them the benefit of the doubt rather than finding reasons to disbelieve them. Partly that's because there's a long history of women being minimized, dismissed or gaslit when they complain about male behavior. But mostly that's because I would extend the same benefit of the doubt to anyone in that type of situation. If my buddy tells me he got robbed at gunpoint on the way home last night, I'm not going to say, "Well, are you sure the guy had a gun? Did you actually see it? Maybe you just misunderstood his polite request for money. It's like people aren't even allowed to panhandle anymore!"
Not true. There are multiple accusers (at least 5) and a history of the network paying off staffers because of inappropriate comments by Chris Matthews. I would be more than willing to give him the benefit of the doubt if it was just one or maybe even two women who received payouts or had some kind of motivation. Even before the Laura Bennett's latest accusation there was a female producer who received $40K in 1999 due to inappropriate comments by Matthews. In 2017 there was this article on Matthews which mirrors what Bennett is saying:
Sources: Chris Matthews Runs An Abusive Work Environment
December 31, 201711:06 PM ET
MSNBC Host Chris Matthews runs an at times openly derisive and brazenly sexist news operation that has led at least some staffers to describe themselves as victims of “battered wives syndrome,” according to three of his show’s guests and two former producers who spoke exclusively to The Daily Caller.
Two former NBC producers independently alleged Matthews would rate the looks of his female guests on a scale and said Matthews was so abusive that staff joked about being battered women. The interviews in total paint Matthews as a tyrant liable to fly off the handle at the slightest mistake, who was eager to objectify women and made inappropriate sexual comments appear to be a matter of course for someone in his position.
Both former NBC producers requested anonymity out of concern for their future careers. One is actively seeking a job in media and the other still works closely with MSNBC. One expressed fears about being labeled a “troublemaker” and cited the string of former Fox News women who have all but disappeared from television.
“Sadly, I know other women who won’t even be an anonymous source regarding Chris [Matthews] because they’re that concerned about the door closing on career opportunities in media,” the producer concluded.
According to the two producers, whose combined time at the network nearly spans the existence of “Hardball,” Matthews frequently objectified his female guests and staffers, inappropriately commenting on their appearance and clothing. Matthews would allegedly use pet names like “cutie” and “sweetie pie” to refer to female guests and was constantly making uncouth and “boorish” remarks about women.
“He would eye down a woman who walked on set or comment on their features or what they were wearing,” one former producer said, explaining that it looked like Matthews was undressing the women with his eyes. “He would objectify them and interrupt them in a way that he would never do to his male guests. He has a very outdated view of women.”
The other producer likened his behavior to that of a “teenage boy,” alleging that Matthews would rate his female guests on a numerical scale, deciding which guest was the “hottest of the week,” and would talk about how “hot” various women in the office were, including herself.
One host on a CNBC show was allegedly on the receiving end of many of his comments and tried to avoid being around Matthews in the office.
“She didn’t want to be in the same room as him,” the former NBC producer claimed. “She wouldn’t want to get her makeup done if he was in there too.”
The former producer said that while Matthews made comments about her appearance, she never felt like she was being harassed. She described the comments as “unprofessional” and “inappropriate” and said his remarks made multiple women uncomfortable.
Matthews’ alleged casual misogyny would sometimes spill out into the open, and he has a long history of making sexist remarks in interviews or on his show.
In a 2008 New York Times profile, Matthews introduced himself to actress Kerry Washington by giving her a business card and telling her that Phil Griffin, the head of MSNBC, wanted to get her on the show because she is “black” and “beautiful.” Matthews later referred to the actress as a “total knockout.”
Matthews has also creepily told then-CNBC reporter Erin Burnett to get closer to the camera and asserted that vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin is “electric” but could be “hotter.” Just last year, he was caught on a hot mic admiring Melania Trump’s “runway walk,” and in 2017 he noted that acting Attorney General Sally Yates is “attractive, obviously.”
The host was notoriously tough on former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, suggesting that her political success was due to her husband Bill’s infidelity, asking a male senator if it was “tough” to debate a woman, claiming that Bill had Hillary on a “leash,” and routinely mocking “witchy” Hillary’s “fingernails on a blackboard” voice.
In addition to the troubling behavior toward women, all five of the sources who spoke to TheDC about the workplace environment at “Hardball” described Matthews as verbally abusive. They claimed that Matthews’ outbursts went beyond normal or justifiable frustration, and former staffers apparently felt like they had to “walk on eggshells” around their “abusive” boss.
The two former producers independently referred to incidents involved screaming at staffers, throwing objects around, and generally demeaning guests and the people who worked for him.
“I would describe it as verbal abuse,” one former producer asserted, recalling their own experiences with Matthews. “The screaming is beyond the screaming you’ve ever heard. You just feel so under attack.”
“He did it so openly,” the producer continued. “It’s not just sexual harassment … what are you supposed to do when somebody is verbally abusing you and attacking you this way?”
The former producers claimed that multiple female employees were often left in tears after Matthews’ angry tirades, which would frequently occur in front of guests during commercial breaks or after his show ended.
On one recent occasion, a producer said Matthews berated a staffer so aggressively during a taping that they had to halt production. Matthews left the set to continue yelling at the staffer, who he called “worthless” and an “idiot,” while a panel of guests waited for him to cool down. Two other people who were present recalled the incident immediately and seemed shaken by what had happened, although one could not remember the exact words Matthews used.
“Seeing it would have made you shudder … you don’t forget something like that,” the former producer said of the incident.
A witness with several years in broadcast media said, at the time, they had never seen anything like it and likewise haven’t since.
“Walking into the studio that day felt like walking into someone else’s unhappy home,” the witness recalled. “There was a sense of unease that was obvious from the outset, and I remember at one point hearing Matthews shouting in the distance.”
The witness, who wished to remain anonymous because he or she is still a guest on other MSNBC programs, said all of the guests seemed “horrified” by Matthews’ behavior, while the staff “reacted with what almost read as embarrassment.”
“I just cannot convey strongly enough how eerie it felt,” the witness continued. “I’ve never been in a situation like that in a TV studio.”
During the same interview block, two people present recalled Matthews asking to rearrange the seating so that he would be sitting next to the only young woman on the panel, even though producers had initially seated her at the opposite end of the table.
Two sources with experience on the show said they often couldn’t believe some of the degrading and belittling things Matthews said to his staffers, such as mocking their intelligence and telling them weren’t good enough to be working on the show. The rants were often laced with expletives and one source described Matthews as acting like “a drunk at a bar.” Both said Matthews’ behavior made guests feel highly uncomfortable.
TheDC’s Betsy Rothstein interviewed Matthews for a piece in AdWeek in 2010, and Matthews admitted he often argued with producers but didn’t cop to being overly aggressive.
“We have to have our facts right every night – you can’t fix it later. I argue with my producers,” he said. “We argue about getting the facts right.”
One former NBC producer said Matthews did not like to be challenged and doing so would lead to one of his fits of rage, while a former guest recalled Matthews losing it over minor teleprompter errors or mistakes by producers–“stupid” things that wouldn’t warrant such an aggressive response. Segments of the show were frequently pre-taped as opposed to being live-taped, making minor technical errors even less significant.
The former producer described the HR department at the network as completely unhelpful, indicating that they didn’t take complaints seriously and would try to turn the victim into the problem.
“Their common first instinct is to protect the talent, no matter what the complaint, and then turn the victim into the problem,” the producer insisted. “When he turns on you, look out. All they do is protect him. All they do is protect him from himself.”
All five of the sources TheDC spoke to expressed fears that speaking out publicly against Matthews could hurt their careers.
“No other workplace like this exists where you can get away with that,” the former producer concluded.
MSNBC told The Daily Caller on December 16 that NBC made a separation-related payment to an assistant producer on “Hardball with Chris Matthews” after she complained to CNBC executives about sexual harassment. “Hardball” was hosted on CNBC when the complaint was made in 1999. (RELATED:NBC Made Payment To Staffer After Sexual Harassment Claim Against Chris Matthews)
One former NBC producer, who was at the network at the time of the payment, argued that the woman who made the complaint left the network because of Matthews’ behavior.
“One morning her desk was cleared out overnight,” the former producer told TheDC. “The [Hardball] staff was saying she had made a complaint and they paid her off.”
MSNBC declined to comment to The Daily Caller for this story.
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This is a clear preponderance of evidence which indicates Matthews routinely crosses the line of what passes for acceptable behavior. And it is pretty disgraceful there are a few on the left attacking Bennett now.
Sheriff Bart
Footballguy
If you wanted to make love to a White Castle burger I don't know if you could get any closer.
FTR, not making light of harassment, just this particular incident because it was bonkers.
Wow, I didn't think much of Matthews, but had never heard all of that laid out in detail. I will say, assuming everything in that article is true, his conduct falls well short of a Weinstein or even a Lauer, but that still doesn't excuse it. He sounds like a sexist jerk who may well have crossed the legal line of sexual harassment. Also, just as he doesn't deserve the benefit of the doubt, neither does NBC in terms of its handling of these types of situations.
So I guess I revert back to what I said earlier in this thread, which is that, based on what I know at this point, his departure seems to have been calibrated properly. He didn't necessarily need to be publicly fired, and it doesn't seem like there's anything to prosecute him for, but it's probably for the best that he's gone.
Obviously, I wasn't there and don't know all the details/context, but based on your description, it sounds like an entitled jerkwad was bullying and harassing a female coworker, and because of her appearance, HR responded in a way that, in today's environment, would open the company up to a gigantic lawsuit
Sheriff Bart
Footballguy
No, this woman was really weird. She didn't even work in the same part of the building. She somehow got the idea in her head he was in love with her. He was indeed a jerkwad but would never make fun of someone because of their appearance. I wouldn't of shared if there was even a little bit of malice.
Summer Wheat
Footballguy
tommyGunZ
Footballguy
I suspect these "new rule" are making lots of males think twice (or once, for many) before making advancements. And that's a good thing. For too long, our society has placed far too much of that burden on women. The pendulum is rightly swinging back.
tommyGunZ
Footballguy
There is no bigger fan of Chris Matthews on this forum than me. His books and his shows are the protein that turned me into a political junkie. I think he's the best political analyst of our time. That said, he needed to go. He didn't just make innocent "you look nice today" comments - he said worse, on the air. Which suggests to me that off the air it was far worse, as several women have claimed. His views probably helped him survive even longer than he should have; as a liberal I am sure some of the women he offended admired his views on equality and were torn on whether to expose him.rockaction said:
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OK, that makes more sense. Because based on your original description it sounded like something out of "In the Company of Men" (highly underrated movie, BTW). I've never gotten the impression from your posts that you're a jerk, so it seemed weird that you would be so flippant about an incident like that. Thank you for validating my decision to pose an open-ended question rather than jumping to conclusions.Sheriff Bart said:
Van Dyman
Footballguy
I got a kick out of SNL's panning of Chris Matthews this week. Darrell Hammond does a pretty good Matthews.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XezLiezWN0E&feature=youtu.be&t=305
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XezLiezWN0E&feature=youtu.be&t=305
